I dedicate this week's seven photos to my sister's bridal shop: Kimberley Wilson Fashion and Bridal Outlet.
My wife and I spent a couple of hours there this afternoon. I shoot the photos of the dresses she sells and post them on her web site and Facebook page. These seven are probably my favourite ones. If you're on a budget and looking for a nice wedding gown or formal dress, you should check out her shop! :)
I not only broke through the plateau, I killed it, shedding 3½ lbs this past week.
From what I can tell, it was a combination of using my hand weights with all of the Cardio Boxing routines, instead of just the slow ones, reducing my increased water consumption a little to something more easily managed (without making my bladder want to explode), and maybe the 2-day break from working out that I took earlier in the week? I'm not entirely sure, but I won't argue.We'll see how this week goes.There's a good chance that the moment you realize I'm going to ask you for a donation, you'll click away to somewhere else.
But I'm going to ask you to wait and read this first before making that choice. Maybe the little that I have to say will sink in at some point over the next couple of months and you'll decide to come back and help me out.
On the evening of June 17th, this will be my 4th year participating in the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life.
The Relay For Life is an overnight non-competitive relay (walk or run) that celebrates cancer survivors and pays tribute to loved ones. Funds raised through support the Canadian Cancer Society’s mission to eradicate cancer and enhance the quality of life of Canadians living with cancer.I lost my father to cancer in 1998 and a friend in 2008. My wife lost an uncle to cancer in 2009. Sadly, if you ask anyone, there's a good chance that they too have been affected by this disease.
I don't normally start seeking donations this early, but last year the organizers decided to "award" early leading teams their choice of locations to camp out around the track that night, rather than on a "first come" basis. Our team is hoping to be one of those teams this year, if they decide to do the same thing. All of our kids are coming with us this year and it's so much easier to keep tabs on them.
If you have a few dollars to spare, please consider donating. You can do it online using your credit card: http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/paterson It only takes a few more minutes of your time.
A blog posting is easy to ignore — cancer isn't. We have to fight it. A fight needs support.
Thank you.
(Statistics source: www.cancer.ca)
Most of my photos for this week were taken while I tested out my tripod, inverting the center column and then attaching my camera upside down to shoot pics of whatever I placed underneath it. I was hoping to find some interesting things to shoot with my macro, but ended up not taking as many with it.
But first...
Tuesday, February 8th was Do It For Daron day. I wore purple to help raise awarenes for the cause.
This one is my favourite for the week and is one of my DailyShoot photos. It's looking side my drink bottle, which was pressed up against the end of my 100mm lens.
The first of my test shots. It's a Canadian Dollar (aka Loonie), with the Ottawa Senators logo on it.
Looking into my 18-200mm lens using my 100mm lens.
I have a canvas print hanging on the wall behind our bar in the basement. I didn't make it, but I got it from work years ago when they were getting rid of a whole bunch of them. It's a 3D rendered scene of a game of chess — a checkmate — but there's a sword laying on the board beside the fallen king. It's kinda cool. The print isn't the best quality though, as you'll see in this next shot where you can see the half-tone dots. :)
And this is the same picture, panned back a little.
The last shot — the underside of a glass. All that black is the reflection of the camera I guess. It's pretty cool though.
Had to play some catch-up today to get seven. Why do I do this to myself.... anyway, on with it.
My desk phone at work. This turned out better than I thought it would.
One of my cat's rear feet. I had initially planned on taking a shot of her face, but she wouldn't stop moving. Then I noticed her fuzzy feet and fired off a few shots. I like it.
This was supposed to be an artistic shot of a plug for the DailyShoot. The only artistic-ness I could think of was to apply a colour filter to image. Yeh, not so artistic.
A mirror tile with mirrored glasses sitting on it, each containing a candle. My wife put this out at Christmas, on a table in the basement, and for some reason decided to keep it out after Christmas. I kinda liked the way the reflections all bounce off each other. I should light them one day and try the same shot.
A couple of light hand weights that my wife got me for Christmas to use with my workouts. They work well.
About ½ a cup of corn chips that I munched on for a snack, after using the items in the previous picture this evening. :)
One of two large baskets that sit on our hall closet shelf, each containing mittens, or toques.
That's it for this week.
Not a very exciting week on the photo front, but here we go...
The first was shot for a DailyShoot and turned out pretty good. I have a tube of rare earth magnets that doesn't have much purpose, so I put a couple of them to use. This was a tricky shot, even with using a tripod. I had to hold my hand out in front of the camera pretty far and it wasn't easy to hold my hand still. I had to rest my arm on a chair to get it steady enough for the shot. The magnets really are holding themselves on my finger — they're that strong.
Another DailyShoot shot. This is one of our many TV/device remotes that reside in our living room. Exciting, eh? :)
I've shot this next one before, in B&W. I can't remember if I ever posted it anywhere. We have three of these hanging on the wall in our dining area. For this particular shot, I enhanced the color a little using one of many picture styles for Canon's Digital Photo Professional that I downloaded from the web. I really like it. I took quite a few shots of this, and had a difficult time trying to decide which one I would use for the DailyShoot that day.
This is one of my DailyShoot rejects for the same assignment as the last photo. I couldn't seem to get the lighting the way I wanted. I like the colour though.
This is an origami star(?) that one of my daughter's classmates made for her. She said she makes them for anyone who asks. I shot it for a DailyShoot and never used it.
Another DailyShoot reject. A wooden coaster. I thought it would be cool, until I saw how much my macro lens exposes and didn't like it.
I shot this one moments ago to round off my seven photos for this week. These are books that I have read or am in the process of reading. Talk about diversity. :)
A not-so-happy weigh-in this morning.
I was good with keeping the calorie intake low this week — better than in previous weeks — and yet, there was no loss this week. In fact, there was about a 1 lb gain.
That brings up two possibilities.
The first is that I have officially hit a plateau.
The second possibility that crossed my mind, one that my wife also mentioned, is that maybe I haven't eaten enough and my body is going into storage mode. It makes sense. In past weeks, I would occasionally slip and consume more than I should on a day or two, or get pretty close to my max, and despite that I was still able to lose. My max calculated intaje is supposed to be around 2100-2200. In the last seven days, I was over 1500 calories once, and the rest were in the 1200-1300 range, after subtracting workout calorie burn. Maybe there is some logic to that.
I guess I'll focus on eating a but more for this week. I'm also going to change my usual workout program in YSFE to something with a little more cardio and see how that pans out.
Today marks my 2-year anniversary of beating nicotine addiction.
Alan Carr's "Easyway to Stop Smoking" was the best $20 that I've ever spent on a book. It's better than the patch, better than the gum, better than the pills, and better than cold turkey. Smoking isn't just a physical addiction, it's also a psychological one. If you don't beat both, you'll always crave it.
My wife read the book a year later and will be a year quit in March.
I get nothing in return for plugging the book, other than a good feeling knowing that it might help someone else. If you'd like to read some old blog posts about it, check these out.
In celebration of my amazing achievment, who wants to be the first to sponsor me for the 2011 Canadian Cancer Society Relay for Life? :)
http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/paterson
Thank god for the DailyShoot, or I might not have anything to post. :)
My cat. My trusty model. She looked so comfortable. I only managed too shoot three or four shots before she woke up.
A book that everyone must have. I liked it so much that I bought the newer edition, even though most of the content was the same as the last edition I bought and read. I had a bitch of a time trying to get my glasses to stay in a triangular shape for the shot. They kept wanting to close or open.
I love our stairs. Coincidentally, I think it was around this time last year that we began our five or six month long renovation project of the stairs, main floor, kitchen floor and ½ bathroom. Dig through my blog and I'm sure you'll see some before pics. This shot was originally landscape but I cropped it to portrait to cut out something that was hanging on the hand rail to the right. And then I wasn't sure if I should convert the entire thing to B&W. It looks good in B&W, but I wanted to keep the colour... because, I think we did a great job of staining them. Like I said, I love our stairs. :)
My scale, that I am somewhat obsessed with using in the last couple of months. I thought it would be cool to take a shot of my weight as I stood on it, but soon realized that having my camera in hand would throw that way (weigh?) off. ;) I suppose I could have gotten the tripod out...
My Xbox 360 controllers. I shot them because... well, I couldn't find anything else to shoot. Besides, they were a part of our Sunday activities -- my wife and I played a few games of Yahtzee. :)
This was more of an accidental shot. I was messing around with the autofocus on my camera, aiming it on my feet, and fired off a shot just as the picture on the TV changed to an advertisement. It kinda looks like my feet have a halo.
Last, but not least -- and also a DailyShoot shot -- homemade chocolate cookies. It was a new recipe that my wife decided to try and they are goooood. :)
That's it for this week. I'm still not completely up to speed on this seven photos per week idea. I keep finding myself running around looking for things to shoot. Being winter with windchill warnings certainly doesn't help either.
Hopefully I can get my shit together soon. Dammit.
Friday's weigh-in had me at 248.4 lbs. My progress this past week has slowed down. My calorie intake wasn't beyond the limits, but my workouts were few and far between as my time was a somewhat limited most days.
Anyway, it continues, that's all that matters. :)
Still not up to speed on shooting often enough, but did manage to get seven for this week. :) A couple of them are from my DailyShoot contributions as well.
This was one of the DailyShoot shots. It's my rarely played acoustic guitar that I got a long time ago... like pre-1982. I never did learn to play more than a few notes, unless you count "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore". :) Everyone once in a while I get in the mood to try and learn more, get it all tuned up and stick with it for a few weeks, then it ends up sitting in the corner of my den. For this shot, I sat it on my lap and placed the camera on the strings, looking down the neck. It looks like I strummed it for the shot, but I didn't.
I shot this at work one lunch time, for the DailyShoot. It's a Hot Wheels dragster pen that my wife put in my Christmas stocking. It took me a dozen shots until I got one that looked pretty good.
I had a difficult time finding something for this particular DailyShoot. Find two complementary objects. How hard could that be? I think this turned out pretty good. I thought about making it B&W, but decided to leave it as is in the end.
I shot this on Saturday while I was snowing outside. Our bird feeder hangs just outside our window so our cat can enjoy watching them. The colour wasn't too great, since I had shot it through the window, so I decided to make it B&W. I guess I should refill it, eh? :)
My favourite model, our cat Samantha. This is where she spends most of her time, either sleeping or watching out the window. If I move the automan anwhere else, she won't sleep in her bed on it. It must be in front of this window.
I shot this one this evening, for today's DailyShoot assignment. It took me about half an hour to find something blue that I could make a decent shot out of. I spotted the bottle of Dawn dish liquid at the back of the sink. At first I thought I would try to shoot it as I poured it onto a plate. That didn't work out too well. I then made a bunch of bubbles in it and fired off a half dozen before switching to my 100mm lens for a couple like this one. You can see my reflection and other things in the kitchen. I had to make a few small adjustments to the RAW file, with the tone and saturation to bring out the blue a little better.
A day early, but I'm feeling a little bored.
I passed a personal milestone on Friday; I weighed in below 250 lbs for the first time in 6 or 7 years, at 249.8 lbs. At that time, when I last made an attempt to lose weight, I got down to 240 lbs before I hit a road block.240 lbs is my next milestone. I don't remember the last time I weighed less than 240. I suspect it was some time back in the mid-80s, right afer I left the military.I am less than 10 lbs away from that milestone.Not off to a very good start for my Project 7/52. Due to my slackitivity, my seven photos are from two different shoots. It's allowed, of course, but I was hoping for a better mix. We'll see what the next week brings.
Anyway, here we go for this week.
This is me holding my new nephew, Jaxson Edward Wilson; my sister's second child. He was born on January 5th of this year.
Here we have my son holding his new cousin. My son is very unlike me when I was his age. He loves babies and little kids. I guess he gets that from his Mom. :)
My daughter holding her new cousin. She too loves babies. I just hope they remain other people's babies for a long time! :)
My wife, holding her nephew. She commented that he looks so round. Not chubby or fat, just very... roundish. :) He was born via C-section, so his head didn't have a chance to become temporarily deformed like some newborns. His ears are really tiny too. He's a cutie.
I received a few Hot Wheels cars over the Christmas holidays and decided to take photos of them to post in a couple of the Hot Wheels Flickr groups. This, unfortunately, isn't one of them. :) I've had this one for some time. I like it because it's different.
This also isn't one of them, but it's a Mustang and that makes it one of my favourites. I started mostly collecting Mustangs years ago. It has expanded a little to to include cool looking muscle cars or any other car that happens to catch my eye. I don't go crazy buying everything in sight.
This one is one that I got for Christmas, in my stocking. A 2010 Camaro.
And that's that for week 1, with about ten minutes to go. Yeh, technically I'm probably a day late since week 1 ended yesterday, but it's far easier for me to update this and post them all on a Sunday... so there. :) The week begins on Monday and ends on Sunday for this.
I was down to 252½ lbs this past week, but in the last two days I put a couple back on. It's not like I went crazy and over my calorie limit, so I'm not entirely sure what happened. I guess stuff like that will happen anyway. I'm not going to be too concerned about it, for now. :)
My workouts are still once every two days. I find I have way more energy this way. Perhaps that parts of why I put a couple of pounds back on...
I'm still doing the cardio boxing as my main workout, with a 3lb weight in each hand. I'm noticing that they're getting easier than when I first started using weights, which is pretty cool.
I took my measurements a at some point this week and also managed to find the measurements I took in mid-December. Neck, waist, chest and hips were all down anywhere from a ½ inch to 1½ inches. More progress. :)
I survived the Christmas and New Year indulgences.
Overall, it wasn't anywhere near as evil as I expected it to be and I managed to say somewhat on track. My weight this morning was just under 257 lbs.
I managed to break the 9000 calorie mark at the end of December and I'm just over 500 calories away from reaching 10,000 calories. 10,000 is the last calorie achievement on Xbox Live. When I started this, it seemed so far away. So anxious to get below 250 lbs. :)
